Government Publishes First Of Its Kind National Strategy To Tackle Child Sexual Abuse

On Friday (22nd January), the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, published the ‘Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Strategy’ which has been designed to better protect children from all forms of child sexual abuse.

Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Strategy

The strategy is the first of its kind and has three main objectives:

1. To tackle all forms of child sexual abuse and bring offenders to justice;
2. To prevent offending and re-offending; and
3. To protect and safeguard children and young people and to support all victims and survivors.

The Home Office will ensure that law enforcement, intelligence agencies, communities, online technical companies and charities all work together to achieve the above objectives. The Home Office will invest in the development of new technological capabilities and the collation of data, to bring online offenders to justice and to identify and safeguard more victims and survivors.

The strategy is designed to try to prevent offenders from abusing in the first place through education and information. Where abusers have offended, the intention is that the serious sexual and violent offenders will remain in prison longer.

The Home Office will ensure that police management of registered sex offenders is more effective and will review ‘Sarah’s Law’ (the Child Sex Offender Disclosure Scheme) so that parents and carers are given the advice and information they need to identify risk and safeguard their children.

The Government will introduce a new statutory duty of care for tech companies to ensure that they take action to improve the safety of all of their users, especially children, whilst using the internet.

There will also be further investment in specialist sexual violence support services delivered by the voluntary sector to improve the support available to victims and survivors of sexual abuse.